


Silver

by gutterandthestars



Series: Post Crusades Pining [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: He also needs to come to terms with his actions, M/M, Mentions of Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Nicky | Nicolò di Genova Needs a Hug, Pre-Relationship, Somewhere out there Yusuf is justifiably pissed off with him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:02:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28531890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutterandthestars/pseuds/gutterandthestars
Summary: Written for the Twelvetide Drabbles Challenge 2020/2021, for the prompt 'silver, for 3rd January 2021.***Nicolò leaves Yusuf on the shores of the Holy Land and sails back to Genoa, no plan, no peace, no absolution. He's trying not to think about it, but sooner or later he's going to have to face up to the fact that his family are ageing and he's not.***
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Post Crusades Pining [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2093658
Comments: 4
Kudos: 53
Collections: Twelvetide Drabbles 2020





	Silver

Nicolò di Genova returns subdued to the city of his birth a full two years after the fall of Jerusalem, alone and afraid. He does not resume his place in the church, electing instead to return to his family. 

Nicolò is one of twelve siblings and half-siblings who survived to adulthood; he can lose himself in the crowd as he and Yusuf once did to escape the chaos of conquering armies.  His eldest remaining sister takes him in with few questions. They are no family of note, they owe no particular fealty. Nicolò is nobody; he can slip back into the rhythms of his youth with no murmur save those of the town gossips. 

Everyone is mostly very kind, assuming he is in someway damaged by his experiences at war. Bitterly, Nicolò finds he cannot dispute them but nor can find courage to voice the words he whispers into his folded hands at night; that his own invisible wounds are nothing to the hurts he dealt out to others.

It’s a quiet life, and if Nicolo pretends to be more addled in the head than he is, well that just means fewer passing folk try to talk to him, and that’s his business. His sisters tut over him, but let him be, and he finds simple manual labour in workshops and dockyards. He makes use of his hands. He leaves his sword under his bed, in the attic of his sister’s house.

When the merchants disembark from ships bound from Madhia, Sicily, Malta, Tunis, he watches carefully for a particular face. He is never rewarded.

Nicolò doesn’t spare much thought for his own appearance, but after a decade or so it becomes evident that his ability to age had ended along with his life, the day Yusuf al-Kaysani killed him outside the wall of the Holy City. He wonders, as he lifts crates and carries water, typically the tasks of a much younger man, how long he can be permitted to live this way.

It comes, quite literally, to a head, the day his very youngest sister catches her scarf on a doornail and slips it from her hair. Nicolò sees streaks of silver and panics.

His breath catches, and acid rises in his gorge. 

He has to sit down.

That evening he goes out to the very edge of the quayside and prays, not to God, not to Mother Mary, but to the man he believes must be out there somewhere, the man he has not seen since Nicolò boarded a ship bound for Genoa from some dusty port on the shores of Palestine and tried to leave his guilt and shame behind.

He stares out to sea.

“I do not know where you are, my silence, my shame, my heart. I know I have not seen you in my dreams as I have these women who haunt our nights. But I cannot stay here, and I believe we are bound by forces greater than ourselves, so, Yusuf, I hope when I find you, you can find it in yourself to let me stay by your side. There is nowhere else I belong.”

The night breeze rolls down the hills to brush the back of his neck, his hair tickling his clenched jaw. There is no answer, only the sounds of the sea.

He doesn’t know where to begin, but he thinks he will head east in search of the warriors of his dreams and hope against hope that his counterpart, his killer, his destiny, will meet him on the way. If he, Nicolò, truly cannot die, then he has time. 

The next morning finds him facing the horizon, tucked out of the way at the bow of a ship bound for Malta, the first step on a journey he’s prepared to will take as long as it takes. 

He is missing the other half of his heart. 


End file.
